Article de RésistanceS en anglais
Cet article en anglais de Wim Haelsterman, le correspondant flamand de RésistanceS, revient sur le rassemblement organisé en octobre dernier par la section flamande de Blood & Honour, une organisation néonazie internationale préconisant le terrorisme contre ses adversaires. Wim Haelsterman évoque aussi, dans son article, l'insuccès récent d'une autre manifestation nationaliste flamande auquelle participa le mouvement (francophone) Nation. Cet article sera également publié dans le numéro de décembre prochain de « Searchlight », publication d'investigation journalistique internationale contre l'extrême droite.

Belgium : a playground for Nazis

Photo prise lors de la « SS Memory march », organisée le 22 avril 2006 par B&H-Vlaanderen. Cette photo est extraite du « Blood and Honour-magazine », n°34 (2006) édité par la « maison mère » de cette organisation néonazie.

Almost 700 boneheads showed up for yet another "Ian Stuart Donaldson (ISD) Memorial" haterock fest in Belgium on 27 October, a disappointing result for the Blood&Honour- Vlaanderen (B&H-VL) organisers who had hoped to attract at least 2,000 nazis to the event.

It is not known whether the poor attendance was because of internal problems in the banned German wing of the organisation but the "event" nevertheless got lots of coverage in the Belgian national media. After having major trouble in finding a venue that could host two thousand participants, B&H eventually reverted to the venue used for last year's ISD commemoration in the remote village of Wolfsdonk, near Aarschot, in the province of Vlaams-Brabant (Flemish Brabant).

The venue, hired a few weeks ago by a man - not a bonehead - who wanted the place for a "big birthday party", turned out to be the canteen of a local football club and a huge tent alongside it. At the meeting points, car parks along Belgian motorways where the nazis gathered before moving off to the "secret" location, the people redirecting them were mainly Germans.

At the venue itself, the "security service" was organised by British B&H members who menaced a national TV team that wanted to interview local people. When not doing that, they were ensuring that those attending handed over all their weapons!

On the bill were, among others, notorious hate bands like bands like Whitelaw, Propaganda, Eternal Pride Avalon and the Flemish band Kill Baby Kill led by one of the fascists - Dieter Samoy - behind a vicious racist attack on a black man and his white friend in Bruges last year.

More attention, however, was paid to beer drinking than to the music with most of the participants at the gig getting drunk and, by getting into several brawls, reducing the event to a chaotic mess. When the organisers called for "a minute's silence for white hero Ian Stuart" hardly anyone observed it. "Fuckheads who can't even keep their drunk shitholes quite for a fucking minute for a true white hero" yelled one of the organisers in his own very subtile way. As a result of this fiasco, B&H Flanders had to shut its online forum the next day because it had received so many complaints.

The left-wing party "Spirit", which was part of the previous Belgian federal government, has announced that it will reintroduce its demand that federal parliament outlaw nazi activities on Belgian soil and also ban groups like B&H that are illegal elsewhere. In Germany, B&H was outlawed seven years ago but in Belgium apparently, the political world lacks the courage needed to ban organised nazi activities.

This failure to act is turning Belgium into a playground for all manner of right-wing extremists. Just days before the B&H hatefest, for example, the far-right Vlaamse Jongeren Westland (VJW - Flemish Youth Westland) organisation staged a "national demo" in the streets of Bruges on 21 October.

Despite an intense mobilisation campaign and winning media attention, no more than 60 to 70 extremists showed up, among them numerous boneheads and a delegation from the Walloon fascist outfit Nation.

At the end of a short demonstration, VJW organiser Pieter Van Damme called for a "national-solidarist society" and demanded more respect for the Dutch language. Taking the presence of French-speaking nazis into account, it is unlikely that everyone present really understood his message. Even though "Freedom Of Speech" (for nationalists) was one of the main themes on the day, the participants in the VJW demo were not allowed to speak to the press.

Neither the far-right Vlaams Belang (VB) nor its satellite Voorpost were present at the demonstration because relations between the "bourgeois-liberal' VB and the "genuine nationalist radicals" of the VJW are very frosty. Perhaps this rivalry explains why the VJW deliberately made use of the old VB slogan 'Eigen Volk Eerst!" ("Our own people first") during the march. Most of the VJW's activists, incidentally, share a past in the ranks of the VB but were excluded in one way or other.

About 300 anti-fascists, mobilised by the anti-fascist group Blokbuster, protested at the nazi march.

Wim Haelsterman
Reports from Flanders for AFF/Verzet - RésistanceS.

© RésistanceS – Observatoire belge de l'extrême droite – www.resistances.be – info@resistances.be – Article mis en ligne le 20 novembre 2007.

RésistanceS collabore avec «Searchlight», la meilleure revue internationale d'investigation journalistique sur l'extrême droite.

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